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Apple are offering a new way to get your hands on the iPhone, selling Pay As You Go deals on unlocked handsets directly from the UK online store – but only until May 9th.

Deals on the Apple Store seem to be available across the 3GS, iPhone 4 and 4S on three of the UK’s leading mobile networks – Vodafone, Three and O2 – with them offering an unlocked handset and bundling your choice of 30-day SIM card pre-loaded with minutes, texts and data, making it ready for calling and Facepoking right out of the box.

Each network is offering a slightly different prepay deal:

Three – 300 minutes, 3000 texts, unlimited data – £15

O2 – £10 ‘call credit’, 300 texts, 500MB data – £10

Vodafone – 300 minutes, 3000 texts, 500MB data – £20

It’s also interesting to note that O2′s offer is not available on the ageing iPhone 3GS.

With prepay iPhones usually locked when purchased from providers, getting it straight from the Apple Store would be the best way to grab a handset, not stress about a credit check and still be free to use any network.

Obviously, the option to go it alone with a SIM-free deal is also available.

The prices are pretty much on a parity – with an iPhone 4S 16GB at £499, for example – then sticking a prepay top-up onto the cost.

Whilst the Apple Store prepay offer is a time-limited trial for a couple of weeks, it will be interesting to see if many consumers opt for an all-in-one solution over the popular pay monthly method…buying your iPhone up front is indeed the cheapest way to do it if you do the maths…